In 2010 a massive explosion occurred on a Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which resulted in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill stemmed from a sea floor oil gusher, which was located well below the ocean surface. To date, this oil spill is one of the largest offshore spills in United States history, with tens of millions of gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill has resulted in an environmental disaster having an extensive impact on marine and wildlife habitats. The spill has also damaged the Gulf of Mexico tourist and fishing industries.
As a result of oil spills, catastrophe response teams generally focus their efforts on three types of contaminated zones: 1) in a first zone, there are vast surface areas (of the ocean) where crude oil has created a continuous pollutant layer, 2) in a second zone, there are vast surface areas (of the ocean) where crude oil has created dispersed pollutant layers, and 3) in a third zone, there are areas where the oil spill has resulted in under-water volumes of cloud pollutants.
In response, there have been a variety of ongoing efforts to remove spilled oil from the ocean. However, many of the efforts have proven ineffective, economically and technically impossible or at least inefficient given the large scale of oil spills of the type described above.